NEWS: Turn off your TV and have a Life

CULTURE: Turn off your TV and have a Life

Once again, the AdBusters strikes the streets with a good idea: shut down the small "all mighty" screen and returning to the nice, beauty art of being humans.

This year's strategy for the TV turnoff 2005 includes the "direct action" in the form of an small army of remote controls called "TV-B-Gone™," capable of turning off virtualy any television.

But, I guess we also can have our own desire of becoming more real, more alive, and just turn it off for a week for ourselves. Maybe we'll find that living remains an interesting, cool activity.

The idea that I can walk around any neighborhood with a super-remote changing people's channels at will, excites me more than I care to think about.

So, when is internet shut-off week?

so how do we get one of these remotes? i want one!

Anyone comes around to turn off my TV is gonna eat hot death.

I got rid of my direct TV a couple of weeks ago and find I have lot more time for fun and I am not as agitated. I found I was paying $50 a month for things I was not watching and spending an hour or two a day wasting time watching crap like Gatsenue Girls
( I used to date women like that was I out of my mind?) The ony thing I miss is Supermoto motorcycle racing from europe but hell for $600 a year I can go to Spain and watch a race. I like life with out TV

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/24/magazine/24TV.html?pagewanted=print&position=

I wish I had a remote that forced the AdBusters crowd to watch television and get off their fucking high horse.

The idea of people walking around, interferring with people's personal property galls me. It's an offensive act, not a positive argument against the overwhelming role television has in our lives (which is a valid argument). Tactics like these only serve to bring negative attention to a good idea.

Stage demonstations, leave pamphlets on doors, these are positive steps. This reeks of letting people turn a good idea into a chance to play a lame prank.

Have a life and spend more time on SG.

w00t.

Who needs TV when you have broadband internet?

I'm so so glad I cancelled our cable. The year since has been so monumentally productive in comparison to the years preceding.

television is a vast wasteland, a horse leading itself to the glue factory.

Hold on a second. . . Is it a horse or a vast wasteland? And why would it want to lead itself to a glue factory?

this is a lot of horrible practical jokes waiting to happen

that's the nice thing about having Tivo

you can plan your TV watching around your life, instead of the other way around

[Edited on Apr 27, 2005 by KMFCM]

whilst there is a lot stuff on tv that isn't of interest to me, i think tv still has a large role to play in culture and society.

and i have one of those tv-off thingies, they're brilliant!

I barely watch TV as it is. Movies are enough for me.

[Edited because, whoops, I clicked submit early]

I concur. Tivo has dramatically changed how I watch TV. I just moved, but my Tivo is still at the old place. Cable's hooked up at the new place.

I wanted to sit down and relax after spending several hours painting rooms, so I sat on the couch, flipped on the TV and was just stunned. Nothing good on. No way to know if something good was coming on. Ads on 1/2 the channels. I haven't watched a TV ad in a very long time.

I can see why people at Adbusters would be so against television if they don't have something like a Tivo. I can spend 45 minutes watching an hour long show, days after the show was broadcast. I used to sit and watch TV at certain hours (SGC2C, for example) because I was hooked. Now I'm still hooked, but I have full control over the addiction.

[Edited on Apr 27, 2005 8:33AM]

I don't watch that much TV, but I'm glad I have one. I really don't think it's that big of a deal to watch TV every once in a while. I'm getting sick of people that are like "TV? What's a TV?". If you don't watch TV, fine. Don't. But stop going around saying that people who do shouldn't.

Totally. There's a major amount of anti-TV snobbery online. My favorite is when they suggest that you turn off the TV and go read a book. There are more bad books than there are bad TV programs, by far. What they're trying to say is that you should stop doing what you're enjoying, and start doing what they're enjoying, so they can feel normal.

Yeah, because reading a shitty John Grisham novel ("Oh, I bet this idealistic young lawyer is going to find out the system is corrupt!") is so much better for you than watching an episode of Deadwood.

Yeah, I'd be more for this if I hadn't be using a dvr for the last 2 years. I think its ok to piss away some time enjoying what you want, but the tv ads are truely evil. And laugh tracks, they are evil too. So stick to ad free drama, documentaries and cartoons.

THANK YOU!!!

I hate anti-TV snobs! It's like they make it a point to let the world know that they don't watch TV. I would find it just as ridiculous if someone walked around all day proudly saying that they never read. TV is just a means of conveying information, just like text, the internet, movies, etc. Bad information can be found on any of these media, but you never see the same elitist-tinged outcries against the others as you do with TV.

Just want to add that I don't hate people who don't watch TV, just those that feel it necessary to announce at every spare moment that "TV is crap". My point is that it's no more or no less evil than any of the other means of conveying information.

VINCENT: What's a pilot?
JULES: Well, you know the shows on TV?
VINCENT: I don't watch TV.
JULES: Yes, but you're aware that there's an invention called television, and on that invention they show shows?
VINCENT: Yeah.

Disagree--TV is pure evil.

There is something about the way our cognitive perceptual structures perceive video images (as opposed to film images, or the pages of a book) that suppresses certain brain waves and brain functions. TV interacts with our biological systems to turn off our thinking parts and and our mental judgement of the passage of time, and literally turns us into zombies.

How else could we explain the eight hours I spent drooling and watching a CSI marathon? I mean, the show isn't even that good!